


a certain step towards falling

by haley625



Series: unconditionally and irrevocably universe [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Human Sokka, I will add more tags as I go, M/M, POV Zuko (Avatar), Vampire Zuko (Avatar), hello zukka twilight au nation, is this a sequel if it's a rewrite of a fic i already wrote? WHO KNOWS, unconditionally and irrevocably: but from zuko's point of view
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:14:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27808915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haley625/pseuds/haley625
Summary: Zuko. Zuko. Zuko.He wasn’t going to answer her.Zuko. Zukooooo. Zuko. Zuko.Toph always did this, but most of the time – well, sometimes – if Zuko ignored her long enough, she would eventually shut up. Which is exactly what he planned on doing.--Or, the Zuko POV rewrite of unconditionally and irrevocably.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: unconditionally and irrevocably universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034634
Comments: 50
Kudos: 209





	a certain step towards falling

_Zuko. Zuko. Zuko._

He wasn’t going to answer her.

_Zuko. Zukooooo. Zuko. Zuko._

Toph always did this, but most of the time – well, sometimes – if Zuko ignored her long enough, she would eventually shut up. Which is exactly what he planned on doing.

Zuko readjusted slightly, pressing himself further back into his pillows and bringing his worn copy of _Emma_ directly in front of his eye-line, as though hiding his face would stop Toph from shouting her thoughts at him from downstairs.

He was pretty sure that she was downstairs.

Her thoughts sounded far enough away – not _so_ loud that he couldn’t tune her out. Zuko sighed, focusing his attention on the words on the page in front of him and the quiet pattering of rain against his window. She seemed to have –

_Zuko. Zuko. Zukoooooo. Zuko! **ZUKO.**_

“What?!”

Zuko dropped his book into his lap and glared up at Toph, who was in fact _not_ downstairs, but standing in his doorway, an obnoxiously smug grin plastered across her face.

“What, I can’t come talk to my dear brother?”

“What do you want, Toph?” Zuko repeated.

Toph put her hands up in the air. A mock apology. “We just want your opinion on something. And it would be easy to just _ask_ you, if you actually hung out with us, but when you’re lurking in your room all the time like a –”

“Like a vampire?” Zuko deadpanned.

Toph leveled him an unamused look. “I was going to say like a thirteen-year-old girl, but sure. Let’s go with that.”

Zuko groaned, threw his book to his side, and sat up. “What could you _possibly_ need my opinion on?”

“It’s a surprise.”

Zuko leaned back.

“But it’s _important,_ ” Toph whined, when she heard the rustling of fabric against pillows. “Come _on_ , you can’t stay up here moping every single day.”

“I mean, I can,” Zuko argued, “I do. All the time.”

“Yeah, and it’s annoying, so come downstairs.” Toph didn’t wait for an answer – negative or positive. She surged forward and grabbed Zuko’s arm, pulling him out of bed, out of the room, and down the stairs.

“ _Toph_.”

“Sorry, I don’t have the patience to go back and forth with you, it’s boring.”

Zuko made an annoyed noise under his breath, which Toph didn’t acknowledge.

She tugged him into Iroh’s office and – Iroh was nowhere to be found. As soon as the door swung shut, Toph dropped Zuko's hand and joined Haru and Mai where the pair was crowded around Haru’s laptop, sitting on Iroh’s desk.

 _She looks a lot like Chief Swan,_ Haru thought, a curious look on his face.

 _He looks loud_ , Mai mused, and Zuko practically _heard_ her eyeroll.

“Oh hey, Zuko,” Mai said, looking up to meet his confused gaze, “We’re uh – what’s it called, Toph?”

“Facebook stalking,” Toph supplied, and Mai nodded.

“We’re Facebook stalking the new kids,” she finished. “Want to join?”

“What?” Zuko asked.

Not that he didn’t know. All _anyone_ had been thinking about at school for the past week was the fact that Chief Swan’s two teenage children were moving to Forks, after living in Phoenix for nearly a decade. Zuko thought it was incredibly rude, and it had honestly been grating, listening to everyone and anyone wonder about if they were _cute_ or _funny_ or _single_. As he’d gathered from unwillingly listening, the Swan siblings were moving to Forks because their mother had died. It felt – it felt _wrong_ and intrusive to gossip about them, and Zuko was seriously annoyed that his siblings had apparently decided to participate.

Which, he told them.

“This is ridiculous,” Zuko said, throwing himself in the high-backed chair in the corner of the room, as far away from the desk as possible. “How is invading the privacy of people you don’t even know entertaining?”

“Lighten up, Zuko,” Toph suggested, “Their profiles are literally public. It’s like looking someone up in a phonebook. But with pictures!”

“Pictures that you can’t see,” Zuko muttered to himself.

Toph didn’t flinch. “Pictures which Haru and Mai are _more_ than happy to describe to me because they, unlike you, don’t have enormous sticks up their asses.”

Zuko crossed his arms over his chest. “Did you drag me out of my room just to insult me?”

 _She wants to know if you think the boy is cute_ , Haru thought.

“No,” Zuko answered. Haru snorted.

“No what?” Toph asked, looking between Haru and Zuko, puzzled. “What did you think?”

Mai raised her eyebrows. “If I had to guess, I would say that Zuko doesn’t want to participate in your matchmaking plan.”

“Your _what_?” Zuko exclaimed. “Toph, are you serious?”

“Don’t blame me,” Toph said, “Mai’s the one who said he looked like your type. I can’t even _see_ him, which is why I came to get you. To confirm.”

“If he’s my type,” Zuko said flatly.

Toph grinned. “Mhmm.”

“How do you even know what my type is?” Zuko demanded, glaring at Mai.

“Well,” she said with a smirk, “ _Jet_ –”

“If he’s anything like Jet, then he’s _not_ my type,” Zuko interrupted.

All three of them laughed, but Mai answered, “That’s exactly why I think that he _is_. He is incredibly not Jet-like. I would even go so far as to call him opposite Jet.”

This was so stupid. _So_ incredibly stupid. The thing with Jet – if you could even call it a _thing_ – was over a year ago, and so brief that it didn’t even – it was stupid. And Zuko had decided, after that, that trying to date humans was a futile and stupid and frankly _dangerous_ endeavor, so _why_ they were even suggesting that he –

 _Come on,_ Mai thought, interrupting his internal tirade. _You know that you’re curious_.

Fine. He was. A _little_ bit.

Zuko groaned, dragging himself out of the chair and across the room. He hovered behind the trio, adamantly refusing to lean in close to the screen like them.

The profile for _Katara Swan_ was pulled up on the screen, and Haru, once Zuko had settled behind him, clicked on a picture at the top of the page. It expanded, taking up most of the screen.

Zuko immediately understood what Haru had been thinking: the girl, Katara, looked _incredibly_ similar to Chief Swan. But – and Zuko would _not_ admit this out loud – he didn’t give her much thought, past acknowledging the likeness between her and her father.

Zuko’s eyes were drawn almost immediately to the boy to her right, who had his arm wrapped around her shoulders. They were squished next to each other on a tiny loveseat. The boy – Zuko spared a sliver of a second to glance at the caption and find his name ( _Sokka)_ – was grinning widely and using his free hand to poke Katara in the side. His dark hair was pulled back, tied up with a light blue ribbon. Sokka’s eyes, glinting with amusement, were dark brown and wide and – Zuko couldn’t think of another word for it – _inviting_. Warm. That was another word. He had a dusting of freckles across his cheeks; Zuko found his attention drawn to one just above his lips. Lips that looked so, incredibly, inhumanely _soft_ and tempting and – again, _inviting_ – and –

 _Ha. I knew it_.

“Shut up, Mai!” Zuko snapped, before processing that she hadn’t spoken out loud. Fuck –

“Oh my god, he _is_ your type,” Toph said, turning around and punching him _much_ harder than was necessary. “Mai, you’re a genius.”

“I’m aware,” Mai responded, leaning back in her desk chair.

“Whatever,” Zuko whined, going to stand in front of the desk to more easily glare at all of them. “It’s not like I’m ever going to talk to him. We don’t talk to anyone.”

There was a long pause – too long. Even their thoughts were silent, which meant that they were actively trying to conceal _something_ , which –

“ _What_?” Zuko demanded. “What’s wrong with all of you?”

“Well,” Haru started, avoiding Zuko’s eye contact. He didn’t finish out loud, instead thinking, _it’s not clear exactly, but I’m pretty sure that…_

“No,” Zuko said, stopping Haru before he could finish his thought. “No.”

“Like I said,” Haru continued, ignoring Mai and Toph’s disgruntled noises at being left out, “It’s incredibly fuzzy – it’s almost like I can’t see _him_ – but there’s definitely - there’s something.”

“There’s probably a _reason_ that it’s not a proper vision,” Zuko said firmly. “Whatever you saw was wrong.”

Haru just rolled his eyes.

Zuko was _not_ going to – _whatever_ it was that Haru was trying to imply – with Sokka Swan. In all likelihood, they would probably never speak to each other. Forks High School wasn’t big, by any means, but it was more than possible to never talk to someone. And that’s exactly what Zuko was going to do.

Zuko turned on his heel and stomped back to his room, pointedly ignoring Haru’s parting thought –

 _Good luck with that_.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> HI ZUKKA TWILIGHT AU NATION....HOW ARE WE DOING.
> 
> so this is where i will be posting zuko POV rewrites of scenes from unconditionally and irrevocably! please consider this first bit a prologue - it came into existence because of a writing prompt on tumblr that asked for a scene "before the beginning" of the main story! it also only asked for three sentences but, well, if you know me at all you know that i am incapable of doing that.
> 
> so here we are! please subscribe so you can stay #updated
> 
> p.s. definitely chat with me [on tumblr](https://fruitysokka.tumblr.com/) because that's where i talk about everything. 
> 
> p.p.s. the title of this fic is an excerpt of a quote from pride and prejudice. because, it's zuko's point of view. where ELSE would i pull a title from.


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